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#1310917 - 11/23/0912:14 PMRe: Any way to slow down a Youtube video?
[Re: Mark_C]

EP
Full Member
Registered: 04/20/06
Posts: 496
Loc: One of the Flyover States

I use a program called Power DVD - it will play DVDs or media files, and will slow them down to 50%, video and audio (audio pitch stays the same). No doubt there are others, but this one works for me. Of course, you have to have a program to capture the YouTube video, first. I use Replay Media Capture for that, and then use the Replay Media Converter to convert them to .mpg files that Power DVD can read.Works real slick. Takes a couple of steps but it's no big deal.

That will allow you to play it back at 1/2 speed without changing pitch. I use it all the time for learning lead and rhythm guitar parts to popular songs; works quite well. I'm sure there's better software if you need it even slower, but this works for me.

Edited by Horowitzian (11/23/0901:26 PM)

_________________________
Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear weapons.

I succeeded in slowing this down in a way that appeared useful for the purpose intended.

1. I downloaded the best-quality version available of the video (in this case mp4), because slowing down always makes the quality worse so might as well not compound the problems. (For downloading, you use whatever works. I used a command-line utility for Linux called youtube-dl. It doesn't matter much; successfully getting the file is what counts.)

2. I played it in VLC and pressed the "play slower" button till it got down to quarter speed. (It will go even slower, but I didn't try that.)

(VLC is free, and will run on all commonly-used systems - available from the VLC website.)

The sound was not nice, quite choppy, but it was OK for transcribing in my opinion. My computer is a few years old and had a cheap & slow processor even for that time, so anybody with a good computer could expect results as good or better than what I got.

This is prolly going to sound pretty dumb..... how does one "download" a YouTube video? I am able to watch them online, but I have no idea how to download them so that I can, for instance, save them on my iPhone for viewing when off line.

I never thought I would reach the age when I said "It's amazing what young people can do with technology these days".... but sadly, it appears I am already there...

Marcus - what have you tried so far, that hasn't worked? Or, in other words, what specifically went wrong?

Thanks for the offer of help David. However, I have resolved the issue. What I have discovered is that if I use Safari and I press Command, Option, A - I get the activity box and I found that I am able to download the .flv files that way by double clicking on the appropriate link in the activity box. I am still in the process of trying to work out the best way of converting the .flv file into something that will play in quicktime so that I can use a short video in a powerpoint presentation.

Sometimes I 'download' youtube video to realplayer (there's even a little pop-up that will appear at the top right you can click on to do this, if you have real player that is i guess) This is helpful if the net is down or even slow to have ones you may be working on available offline...don't think offhand they have a slowdown feature though.

Marcus - what have you tried so far, that hasn't worked? Or, in other words, what specifically went wrong?

Thanks for the offer of help David. However, I have resolved the issue. What I have discovered is that if I use Safari and I press Command, Option, A - I get the activity box and I found that I am able to download the .flv files that way by double clicking on the appropriate link in the activity box. I am still in the process of trying to work out the best way of converting the .flv file into something that will play in quicktime so that I can use a short video in a powerpoint presentation.

Note that many YT videos are posted in more than one format. If you can download in a better format to begin with, it will be easier all around.